THE RESEARCH STUDY

1. THE RESEARCH STUDY Main investigation: • designed to assess potential relevance of HRA for popular and provider attitudes towards social rights • funded by ESRC and conducted 1/9/01 - 28/2/03 • in-depth interviews with 49 working age adults; 9 benefits workers; 14 social workers

2. OVERVIEW OF SESSION 1. Locate human rights within New Labour social policy, especially social care. 2. Summarise findings of social worker interviews. 3. Outline implications for disability policy and politics.

3. HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL POLICY 1. Civil rights, social rights and human rights. 2. Rights to social care and modes of rationing. 3. Human rights, rights to social care and positive obligations.

4. CIVIL RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL RIGHTS • civil rights: negative, granted to individual, protected by law • social rights: positive, granted in form of legal duty on public authorities, accessed via needs assessment by individual • human rights are civil rights, but linked to social rights

5. SOCIAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CARE • aim of ‘promoting independence’ achieved through rationing • ‘managerial gatekeeping’: eligibility criteria tied to budgets • ‘professional gatekeeping’: explicit rationing by front-line staff • ‘bureaucratic gatekeeping’: implicit rationing by ‘street-level bureaucrats’

6. HUMAN RIGHTS AND RATIONING REGIMES Main investigation: • new illegality ground for judicial review exposes front-line decision making to legal scrutiny • Convention rights may place positive obligations on public authorities to make provision e.g. Articles 2, 5, 8

7. STARTING PREMISE OF RESEARCH STUDY Professional understandings of social rights and human rights constrained by tension between socially and politically constructed notions of dependency and responsibility.

8. PROMOTING INDEPENDENCE • inevitability of human dependency linked to notion of human interdependency • welfare dependency to be overcome by mental resolve • ‘othering’ via view of welfare dependency as unilateral compared to ‘normal’ reciprocal relationships

9. BALANCING RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES • social rights dependent on fulfilling responsibilities, particularly to work • own responsibility to promote independence in line with managerial gatekeeping • responsibility of service users to co-operate with social workers

10. RIGHTS AND FRONT-LINE PRACTICE • human rights = ‘natural’ rights rooted in human interdependency based on kinship • human rights inalienable, but not linked to universal social rights • human rights resisted as legally enforceable rights

11. IMPLICATIONS FOR DISABILITY POLICY AND POLITICS (1) Privileging of civil rights over social rights criticised: • individual model denies institutionalised discrimination • legislation has not given disabled people access to public resources • barriers to gaining legal redress for infringement of rights

12. IMPLICATIONS FOR DISABILITY POLICY AND POLITICS (2) Civil rights based on individualistic notions of autonomy: • cognitive notions of autonomy underlie both policy and professional discourses and disability politics • negative freedoms important in protecting disabled people from infringements of privacy and dignity • move to human rights consistent with welfare retrenchment & conditional social rights

13. IMPLICATIONS FOR DISABILITY POLICY AND POLITICS (3) Social rights represent claims on resources: • freedom involves risk, requiring collective protection (welfare systems) • political processes might be used to enforce positive obligations • potential for professional advocacy to reinforce grassroots pressure

14. IMPLICATIONS FOR DISABILITY POLICY AND POLITICS (4) Politics to be based on human interdependency and relational autonomy: • disabled people may exercise autonomy in differing directions • for older disabled people relational aspects of care provision enhance autonomy and security